Inside Ovation's Acoustic Pickup Evolution

The piezo pickup designed by Ovation engineer
James Rickard was awarded a U.S. Patent in
1973 and is still used in the majority of the company’s
guitars today.

In my last column, A Piezo Pioneer, we talked about Takamine,
one of the pioneers in the amplification of
acoustic guitars. The other major brand offering
factory installed, full systems (pickup and
integrated preamp) in the ’70s was Ovation.
Designed by an Ovation engineer named
James Rickard, their innovative pickup was
issued U.S. Patent No. 3,712,951 in 1973.

The Ovation design differed from
Takamine’s in that it sat in a saddle slot in
the bridge, rather than in a structure that
coupled to the saddle from underneath the
bridge. Like the Takamine pickup, however,
Ovation’s pickup used six very massive, piezo-ceramic
elements. Consequently, the pickup
and its integrated 1/4" saddle was much
wider than the more traditional 3/32"-wide
saddles that were commonly used by companies
like Martin, Gibson, and Guild.

To understand what makes this baby
tick, let’s talk about what’s under the
hood. Starting at the top (Fig. 3), we find
a molded plastic saddle that is segmented
like a toy snake. This design feature allows
the saddle to be a one-piece affair made out
of a fairly hard plastic. Yet it still maintains
the flexibility needed to direct the force of
each individual string directly downward
onto its respective piezo element. This
segmentation also eliminates undesirable
crosstalk and phase cancellation from the
adjacent strings.

The saddle is shaped like a tent (Fig. 6)
and contacts the piezo element only on the
edges of each element. The resulting pocket
over the top face of the elements provides
the necessary space to solder a buss wire (in
this case the ground buss) directly to the
top face of each sensor.

On the bottom of the assembly, the elements
ride on two plastic rails running along
their edges. This creates another pocket that
provides clearance for the bottom solder
connections of the positive signal buss. The
entire assembly is then inserted in a grounded,
aluminum channel that acts as both a
supporting structure and a Faraday cage that
shields the positive buss and electrodes from
electromagnetic interference.

During assembly, the structure is injected
with an RTV silicone-rubber compound,
which fills the air gaps, seals the ceramic
elements, and holds the structure together.
Since the pickup and saddle form a unitized
assembly, thin plastic shims were inserted under the pickup during set up to allow for
action-height adjustment.

Ovation’s pickup design is still used in
the majority of their current offerings, but
their preamps have advanced significantly,
now providing multi-band tone controls
and onboard tuners.

Overall, the Ovation system, like the
Takamine, is a great, no hassle, plug-and-play
solution offering excellent performance
in high-volume stage settings. From my
experience designing pickups, however, I do
see two major problems with the Ovation
system. The first is its massive size, which is
primarily an aesthetic issue since it just looks
out of character with a traditional acoustic
guitar. The other problem is that all the
interceding materials incorporated in the
design (aluminum channel, plastic rails, silicone
rubber, etc.) tend to decouple the pickups
response from the body tones and lean a
little too heavily toward the string tones.

Let’s fast-forward to the ’80s when
it was routine to see acoustic-electric
Takamines and Ovations sharing the stage
with electric guitars, basses, and drums
in many of the leading country-rock and
“hair” bands. Meanwhile, if you owned a
Martin, Guild, Gibson, Taylor, or Fender
acoustic, you were relegated to standing
statue-still behind a stage mic, struggling to
be heard. While this setup was fine for an acoustic-bluegrass band or for a soloist in
a coffee house, it just didn’t cut it playing
alongside electric instruments and drums
in larger venues. Consequently, these companies
were losing sales to the ready-to-go
acoustic-electrics and were beginning to
understand that they really needed to jump
on the bandwagon.

Seeing this opportunity, California-based
transducer company Barcus Berry developed
a large format, 1/4"-wide undersaddle
pickup that was showing up in some Guild
models, and Japanese supplier Nanyo Boeki
was supplying a similar system to Ibanez,
Hondo, and Aria. L.R. Baggs released a
smaller take on the Ovation pickup with
their 1/8"-wide LB6, which had a metal
body that supported the ceramic elements
and an integrated saddle that bonded to the
chassis. The LB6’s saddle material was not
segmented like the Ovation, and had to be
handcut to create the necessary radius and
saddle height before installation. This was
always a good-sounding pickup and enjoyed
a loyal following, but the handfitting
required for installation prevented it from
being adopted by manufacturers who needed
a more production-friendly solution.

Still looking for a non-invasive solution
that would not require the alteration of the
basic guitar structure, Martin approached
Barcus Berry and requested a scaled-down
variation of their wide-format, undersaddle
transducer. This new design fit into a conventional
3/32" saddle slot and was brought
to market by Martin as the Martin Thinline
332 in 1983. The pickup was first introduced
in the Martin Shenandoah series and
was also sold as an aftermarket retrofit.

Although the Thinline 332 had promising
initial success, some fundamental
design flaws and quality issues prevented
it from reaching its full potential. It was
because of this initial success, however, that
Martin reached out to other designers in an
attempt to remedy some of the issues and
reintroduce the product.

Next time around, we’ll take a detailed
look at the result of their outreach!

Larry Fishman holds more than 30
patents in transducer and musical
instrument design. He is president
and founder of Fishman Transducers,
which he began in his garage in 1981.
In the early ’90s, he also co-founded
and managed Parker Guitars (which
was later sold to U.S. Music Corp.) with his friend
Ken Parker.

Larry Fishman holds more than 30 patents in transducer and musical instrument design. He is president and founder of Fishman Transducers, which he began in his garage in 1981. In the early ’90s, he also co-founded and managed Parker Guitars (which was later sold to U.S. Music Corp.) with his friend Ken Parker.

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